I have had my eye on the Roomba for a while, and have read many reviews. I was not fully convinced to try one, until I saw my first cleaning experience in person when my business partner purchased his refurbished Roomba from woot.com.

Since the first month of the new year is coming to an end I guess I should wish everyone a happy new year, that and check one of the second checkbox on my blogging checklist on my New Years Resolution.

One of my many fans (3-4 out there) requested information about a product I own called a SodaStream soda maker. For those of you that do not know what this is, or why you would want one let me tell you.

As you know, I am no stranger to reviewing Dyson products (Dyson DC14, Dyson Air Multiplier). I have always been fascinated by the way they look and I love that they brought a cool (a yellow vacuum is cool when the rest are grey) and functional design into an industry that never seemed like it was going to be updated.

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to a charity I support: One Tail at a Time Chicago. One Tail is a dog rescue that is in Chicago and run by a couple of great people who love dogs. Every Easter and Christmas they do a photo shoot with dogs to raise money for their shelter.

I have been very stressed out. There has been a lot going on lately, and it has been forever since I updated.

It seems like I am no longer in control of my days. They just come and go and stack a large pile of whatever it is in front of me. Enough to keep me busy or annoyed and with my “eye no longer on the prize”.

Ever since I moved back to the city I have crazy busy. I have been working some long days…like 10am until 1:30am… last week I went a bit crazy and was up until 5 am 2-3 nights brainstorming some new ideas, as well as re-addressing some old ones. One night I laid out plans for 6 sites, including logo ideas, slogans, and community features.

So it has been a long time since I have updated things around here… a long time. Anyhow I am semi moved in… I just moved back to the city. I like it a ton so far, but I miss a few things about the burbs…

I went out last night to a Lithuanian Restaurant, had amazing food and tons to drink. Then played some darts and was hoisted in my chair 29 times. Today I felt the pain of last nights events, and swore off drinking for at least 24 hours.

I was forgot I scanned this awesome picture the other day. It is from the anti static bag they put a laptop in (you can see my laptop in the background). It shows some helpless little cartoon character who had enough of the living world, and is deciding to enter the dying world. The little shit puts a bag over his head, and chokes himself with his hand.

Last weekend I received a Good Housekeeping Magazine (april 2007 issue) from my sister as some sort of weird surprise. There is a woman on the cover who lost 102 lbs and I thought my sister was trying to hint that I am a some sort of fat fuck… which I don’t deny.

Things have been crazy for me. Work is going well and I have been really busy, which is good.

Some big news has happened for some friends of mine. A few nights ago my son Sami and his gf Maria had a sweet baby boy. They have yet to name him, which is a common thing in Finland (so they say??). Little Werty is quite cute. I am convinced if if keep calling him that it may stick.

Let me start the review by saying I am getting paid to do it. This only motivates me to do the review, the opinions in the review are indeed my own. Like most of the sites I review I will pick apart the various things I hate or like about it more so than some fluffy this is what the site is aboutâ€¦on that note Halloween Express is about costumes, Halloween and otherwise.

In the last 12 months I have ordered 5 computers from Dell, 3 laptops and 2 desktops. I did all of this ordering through their small business department and have been treated like a king with each order. Not only have they treated me great when I am ordering their customer support has been superb as well. Here is a breakdown of some of the orders:

Yeah I know I bitch a lot, but I do not care. This little rant is about why I think FedEx sucksâ€¦

So as you may have read I was in Canada for about 5 days and I was expecting a new computer to arrive. Dell built it too fast! Anyhow it was sent via FedEx and I made arrangements so that they would not leave it on my porch while I was gone.

Last week / weekend I was up in Canada visiting some old friends that I have not seen for a long while. It was one certain dudes birthday, and I got to see one of my favorite Goldschlager guzzlers. This trip was pretty awesome. I got to see Rae spend money like some sort of high roller, got to visit people and got to get my drink on.

To kick things off let me say that this is a paid review of the site JustSayHi.com and new free dating website, but the opinions expressed here are my own.I want to make this review of value to the reviewer so instead of talking about the product or service I will actually critique the site based on my experience.

I was interviewed by Michael Gray aka GrayWolf the other day for his series on local search.

I am actually not to experienced with pushing a tiny brick and mortar via PPC, but will gain more experience with it in the next month or so when I have to promote my dads sweet site (built by me!!) Naper Valley Masonry – Naperville Masonry. That will be an interesting experiment.

So as you may or may not know, my last name is Kepnick, and I have been trying to research my family history for a while, and one Kepnick kept on popping up, Brad Kepnick. The best part about this Kepnick is that he is a second rate actor who has been in the following tv shows and movies:

I ask that you pardon bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson so that the Chicago Bears have a better chance of winning this yearâ€™s Super Bowl.

As you may or may not know, Tank Johnson was charged with probation violation and is not allowed to leave the state of Illinois without permission from Judge John J. Moran, JR. (Sports Illustrated Article)

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I found out I had a pending review at ReviewMe.com. I was asked and paid to review Aaron Walls SEO Glossary. I have been to it before, thought it was valuable and accepted the offer. Here is the paid review:

For those of you who run a home office and occasionally need to send a fax I have found the following solution to be a really cost effective one, and will only cost you around $10 in fees to set up and should be enough to send around 90 faxes for that $10, which for me is more than a years worth of faxes. You will need a computer, a printer, and a scanner for this to work properly. Right now I see a mix of companies allowing faxes or email attachments, and I am guessing one day all “faxing” could be done through email attachments and for “free”.

Graywolf posted this list on his site this morning and I was shocked to see myself on there… anyhow I will follow up with the list of people I would like to meet. I am not sure if they are all going, but I would like to meet them either way:

I was at the gym tonight and had my ipod shuffle with me as per usual…I was on an elliptical machine and had been on it for around 17 minutes so my heart rate had stabilized at around 150 BPM. A pretty calming orchestra type song came on there that was just steady and smooth, kind of upbeat and happy and my heart rate dropped to about 147bpm.

Do you remember how people used to be so angry with all the AOL cds that would be free in the mail and magazines and all that? Here are some links if you forgot: http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/ and http://www.aolcollecting.com/ .

I woke up this morning (or early afternoon if you want to be technical) and decided to make coffee. I usually drink some Earl (of) Grey Tea and brew it kind of dark, and that gives me a nice amount of pick me up. Today I opted for coffee which I rarely drink and I almost jump kicked through the ceiling. What a difference that makes.

I got a kick out of this email. I signed up for health insurance when I moved back to the wonderful US of A 6 months ago. Oddly enough I have never been to the doctor or anything along those lines since I returned, so I was thinking it would be something about how to actually get what you are paying for out of the shitty insurance that I bought…to my suprise is it was an email trying to upsell me on 2 services that I could purchase through eHealthInsurance.com and actually had nothing to do with my BlueCross BlueShield policy I signed up with. Sneaky little pricks.

In Paris, Aaron and I went to this giant rock festival called Rock en Seine, which was held in a suburb of Paris accessible by the subway, or by a taxi. It was miles outside of the downtown area and would be holding a large outdoor music festival with probably 40-50,000 ticket holders. It seems like both the planners and the city of Paris did a shit job preparing for this huge musical event. Here are some examples of why Paris needs to remove their head from their ass if they plan to have a successful outdoor music festival again:

I got a call this morning from my grandparents nursing home saying that my grandpa had problems and was being sent to the emergency room. As usual they were rather vague with a description of the situation so it left me with numerous questions.

Aaron: Hey buddy, how are you?
Trose: Kinda busy, can this wait 5
Aaron: no, i NEED you help (left the mispelling in for authenticity)
Trose: not again?
Aaron: I need links, desperately
Trose: Don’t you have enough already?
Aaron: Please, just one from werty.net, no condom.
Trose: Gross dude

So I am back from SES San Jose 2006, and I got to say the coolest thing I found there were the Google AdWords Radio Adsâ€¦ holy shit, I think this will be revolutionary in both technology as well as earnings potential. I think there will be some great opportunity there for what the locals like to call arbitrage.

I am not one to care about much of anything, but I have been hearing about net neutrality a bit over the last few days and did not realize what a big deal it is and how it can effect the lives of me and many of my friends.

I was reading Gregs blog the other day and ran across a picture of Rae and Bob Saget…IN BED. Now I thought that was a little weird but I knew she was a big fan of his…and once made a page about how much she loved him…

I feel warn down after a week of traveling. camping, consulting, and being pampered. I feel physically and mentally tired but I feel like I have seen and lived more in this last week then in the previous 20 odd years of my life. I learned a lot about myself and I think a lot about others, or at least the way I do, or should interact with them. I had lots of time to reflect on myself and the situations I wind up in, found happiness, loneliness, sadness, and fulfillment all in the same week.

I have had a notepad on my desk which I am in the process of cleaning, that had various notes and things that I wanted to blog. So now I am cleaning my desk and instead of throwing out my notes i am actually writing about the things.

So this blog finally has been updated to wordpress v2.0. I have been dreading the update for a while, but when my rankings tanked in December, and Mikey offered to help, I felt now was the time. I plan to play around with this for a while and see where everything goes. I will have to re-organize all of my old post, and give them new titles and categories, but it should be awesome. I will also be experiementing with various types of plug-ins and tagging that is available. Either way this is a good move and I am looking forward to see where this thing goes.

I was in the need for a new bed and I decided to splurge a little and get a memory foam mattress. I have been researching foam mattress online for quite a while and have heard mostly good things about visco-elastic memory foam mattresses. All was good with these except for the price. Lucky for me my new job gave us Costco memberships…so I checked out there site and saw that they had Novaform Memory Foam mattresses in their online catalog. With a little bit more research I decided to purchase one. I would have gotten it right from the costco store, but they only had queen size beds, and I wanted to stick with a full/double size since all of my bedding was already that size.

By 20 second summary. It lets you create lists of things you would like to do and talk to other peoples or read feedback on people who think it was worth doing. It is kind of cool from a motivational standpoint… I dunno either way they are worthy of a werty.net link.

This is just a reminder to myself of the name of something. I talked to my Mom today for a little bit and she told me that she was at the eye doctor and was diagnosed with macular degeneration. It is some sort of eye problem that leads to distorted vision, then blurred vision, then partial blindness it seems like… I am pretty worried about this, and I am uncertain how far along she is with it… hopefully it is the early stages and it can be stopped with proper combination of vitamins…

Herman Miller did it again. I loved my aeron chair and I love my Mirra Chair. It is like a baby aeron, but I think it feels a little bit better, and is avalable in more colors, and costs about 200 dollars less.

Adult Industry News at Movixo.com Porn DVD Rental: ” 19-year old Biology Major Yen Hoang and Junior Emily Hamner, a 21-year-old government and politics major are the latest college coeds to strip it all off for the pages of Playboy Magazine after a six-year absence of campus girl pictorials. The spread features over 30 beautiful women from the Atlantic Coast Conference appearing in various states of undress, some of whom prefered to use pseudonyms to for the sake of privacy. In fact, despite appearing in the buff for all the world to oggle, some of the girls declined to be interviewed after appearing in Playboy. ”

I might have to do this… I have been meaning to look over my life and figure out all the things that have happened. Sometimes I get to carried away in the present to remember the past…I hear this is a good thing, but at the same time I feel like a I am missing a big piece of the pie.

I ordered this garbage can about a week ago, it arrived at the office today… and the horror story begins.

I just moved into my own place and I am “pimping in out”. It is pretty swanky thus far and I needed to get a garbage can that would fit my styles. I checked Target, as well as Target.com and the can they had fell short of my expectations, especially for the price they wanted. EEEEK!

So there is some new product I heard about today on the news… it is called Hushbaby. I guess Hush baby is a cd that you can play to your crying baby and it is supposed to help that child calm down and stop crying. Hush baby is available online at www.hush-baby.com

A co-worker sent me this tool int he mail today. It is pretty cool, it allows you type in any zipcode and it will give you the location on a map…the neat thing is when you start adding the first number it shows you the whole section of the US that uses that specific zipcode prefix… Pretty crazy, but pretty cool
ben frys zipcode tool

It has to have been a few months, but my grandpa was put into a nursing home. His legs would go out on him and he would hit the ground. Not Good. Well he has been going through therapy, gotten used to a wheel chair, things like that and is doing a bit better. There is a rumor that he will be able to come home in a few weeks. Now normally i should be happy about this, but I think it is really bad. Him and my grandma live in a standard chicago style bungaloo, if you do not know the style, there are stairs that lead to the main florr, and stairs that lead to the basement. The doors are small and it will be hard for a wheel chair to manuver around…not good. I guess it would make sense if my grandma was ripped like little richard sandrak, but she is not. So I do not know how they are going to handle all of the problems of getting him in and out of the chair, up and down the stairs, etc. etc. etc.

This is really an amazing article about how people view a website and how their eyes travel across a page, and onto ads, photos and text. It may help you when designing a site, or when you are attempting to add advertising to an existing site. Some of the pointers may be worth a 2-5% increase in your clicks… now to apply this to some of my $ites (c:

It’s a basically a survey designed for internet searchers, asking them
about their preferences and opinions on search engines. The results he says will be
tallied and published on the 14th of November being freely available to the audience
for any usage.

So my buddy Jake got me into playing Texas Holdem, and I started to play all the time. A few buddies and I decided to make a Texas Holdem table and we have been searching to get nice casino quality poker table felt. I have no idea where to look, I would like to feel the poker table felt in person before I placed an order to some online poker supply store. I dunno, If anyone has some suggestions leave me a comment.

It has come to my attention that I currently work with the smallest penis in Chicago. Through various sources at Google, as well as Ali at Blue Lithium, this story has been confirmed many times. In fact, the only positive thing said about this young gentleman came from an unknown lady at Baci Pizza.

I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s got a big banner at the top with Ronald Reagan’s picture on it. But it’s called God Bless America. It even has the lyrics to God Bless America. Who makes this stuff? What are they trying to accomplish offering Ronald Reagan quotes on a website called God Bless America?

My friend Jake has made a glossary with the definitions of numerous SEM Terms. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, what I do for a living. Enjoy the SEM Glossary:
SEM Glossary: Definitions of Commonly used SEM Terms (broken link removed 3-6-06)

The best skatepark in chicago is the Wilson skatyepark, located at Wilson and Lakeshore. In no way is it a substitute for skating authentic street spots in chicago, but if you enjoy skating transitions, specifically cement transitions, it is the best in Chicago.

My Sisters boyfriend has started a new skateboard company called Adult Skateboards. I guess they are going to be old school designs, meaning they are like older shaps; wider, fishtails, etc, but with cooler modern designs. I think they are made to appeal to people who have skated for years and want something different. You can chekc out his site by going to the following URL:
Old School Skateboards at Adult Skateboards dot com.

I am not sure what just happened, but I felt something weird that lasted for about 2-3 seconds. The windows were shaking and the ground was vibrating. It was very strange, sounded like someone ran across my roof. I did some searches on google, but could not find anything. Maybe tomorrow I will hear more about it. Either way it was very Interesting if I want I could worry a ton about it, but I won’t.

Puke: Bad night
werty: NEOs?
Puke: yes
werty: nice
werty: was that girl there?
werty: also lunch at 11:30
werty: ?
Puke: i don’t remember any of it
Puke: last i remember is CHRIS and i yelling at a cab driver that he was going the wrong way, then us running
Puke: i don’t know how i got hoem
Puke: i woke up at like 10 and just yelled fffffffffuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkk
Puke: i don’t know where CHRIS is, he may be in bed still
werty: are you at work now?
Puke: yes
werty: uhmazing
werty: drink water
Puke: i don’t know why or how i rode my bike here
werty: are you still drunk then?
Puke: yes
Puke: i fell over this morning when i got out of bed
werty: you should have called in sick
werty: oh god…. you sir are an idiot!! what were you drinking?
Puke: beer
Puke: whiskey
Puke: i know, if i wasn’t drunk, i may have been smart enough to call in sick
werty: send a pic, i bet you look amazing
Puke: oh, i am sure i do
Puke: good thing i don’t have to leave my desk
werty: excellent
werty: i am posting this to my blog and editing names
Puke: sweet

Free Long Distance and Conference Call software:
“Skype is free and simple software that will enable you to make free calls anywhere in the world in minutes. Skype, created by the people who brought you KaZaA, uses innovative P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other Skype users. If you are tired of paying outrageous fees for telephony, Skype is for you!”

So I was watching this show about Chicago tonight and saw that there is a place in Chicago where you can learn how to blow glass…this is something I have always wanted to try. Anything involving heat I love; lost wax casting, forging, welding, and now hopefully glass blowing.

So a coworker just set up a blog, he is a really grand guy and I wanted to give him a link. His brother and I think it would be funny if we “google bombed” him into coming up for “douchebag named Casey”. So there is the link. Click it and enjoy.

I have been watching all these brilliant streaming TV stations, since I still do not have a television.

here is one called ghostrider:
http://205.188.234.35:8086/;stream.nsv It is some guy going 250 kph on a motorcycle being chased by cops, zipping in and out of traffic and lots of other crazy things. You can see more info at: www.ghostridermovie.net/

I have been busy with work.
I am trying to start getting a social life again.
I want to start working out at least 3 times weekly. I gained like 5 lbs in 2 weeks…and it was not good weight.
I have had a small headache for a few days.
I am going to be getting a good size tax refund this year…now I will have money for crank and whores…
I am thinking of buying property…like a condo or 2 flat… It is kind of scary, but kind of smart at the same time…rent is a waste…the only downside to buying a place would be living there for X length of time.
I might just save a pile of money and invest it in something stupid…maybe nanotechnology (joke…nanotech is actually the future)
fantasy-sports.com is for sale
werty dot net is now a PR5, kinda funny considering it is a piece and I do very little to optimize it
A while back I posted a spammy posting to a girls site who was selling a horse trailer…it ended up ranking high for all illinois trailer searches and sold…someone made 10g’s from it…it was not me, but cool either way.
I will change this layout of this site at some point…if I can get help with the CSS conversion.
I fall in love twice a day
Chai tea is the drink of the gods
I cut back on my drinking
Chicken and waffles is a great meal
I am going to toronto in like a month, and cannot wait…I am craving a break
I have a little bit of saving now and want to blow it on electronics…
I might be getting a free green tinted TV this week from a co-worker.
HellBoy the movie is TERRIBLE
City west theatre is ghetto on tuesdays.
I am ghetto on the weekend.
Anthony logistics hand/body lotion smells damn good
Vitamins will one day rule the world
B12/B6 in turbo doses=healthy mind
It is fun to be a jerk
I hate the blue line
Mornings are for chumps
Reading is good
People are not
I need to start painting/photo/sculpture again.
Hot dates rule
There are 2 types of massages…
Corn Syrup will be the death of us
I won a free song from Itunes
Social Networking is stupid
show me your tits
It is good to have friends
Carbon Monoxide, the silent killer
Things should be cheaper, and we should be paid more
I will never be able to afford a good view
Summer is just around the corner
I need to have a yard sale
I cannot wait to BBQ
I can out shoot 90% of the population(photography)
Based on my experience, blondes can have fun
The glass is rarely empty
My plate is always full

This site is run by guy named Todd, who is from michigan. I met Todd for the first time about a month ago down at the orlando pub con. It was cool, we have been writing back and forth and I just wanted to drop a link to his site.

So I was reading a thread on WMW and a guy was asking what he could do to improve his site…it linked to this and I saw the ad. I clicked it and want to get my taxes done for free. I think I qualify. Hot Damn!

So uh… I was down in Florida at Pub con in Orlando and it turns out that I actually got in a little bit of trouble with the law… apparently it is illegal to wrestle with an aligator. Well it finally caught up to me and I now need to find a Florida criminal lawyer…kind of crappy since I am a broke ass. I found a guy who seems to do a good job, but he may be way out of my leaugue as far as Criminal Attorneys go… eeeeek I dunno.

Interesting story…I still do not have any business cards. I currenlty have my bosses business cards to pass out at PubCon. I need to get my own cards printed, but I am shopping around for the best price…and the quickest turn around.

I fixed the comments on my blog as well as added an xml feed. xml feed

One day I will fix the template and build everything out using CSS and make it really clean and nice with working links and all of that. Maybe one day I will even fix the gallery so you could see my artwork and what not.

LAST PERSON WHO….
Slept in your bed: meg
Saw you cry: no idea
Made you cry: not sure
Spent the night at your house: meg
You shared a drink with: justin, my boss – drinking at work
You went to the movies with: ana
You went to the mall with: sean
Yelled at you: I ignore most yelling
Sent you an e-mail: cory
You kissed: meg

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
chemistry mid term. The answer by one student was “so profound” that the
professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of
course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

This is a pretty interesting story from my message board. here is the original thread:
Attention dog owners

Well it starts like this: “My dog really really stinks. I give him baths about every two weeks and the stench doesn’t come from his body fur. The stench mostly comes after he’s been itching his face. Do you think that he just has bad allergies and his face gets stinky with snot? Or what else?

So my friends mom is trying to sell her horse trailer. I do not know much about these types of trailers but here is the info I got from their page. From what I can tell it is a nice looking horse trailer on sale for cheap.

This page is kind of like ebay, without all the annoying pictures..it is way faster… i need to buy some belt buckles. I like to buy them from the auctions because they are vintage and I can usually buy them for cheap. I have even seen some custom belt buckles on there. I need to get one that says “werty” on it. NO JOKE!!!

So my sister and I went to visit my grandparents and my parents today and we took leavitt there… on the corner of Augusta and Leavitt Tumans used to stand… Tumans was the greatest dive bar in chicago, you could buy a round of drinks for 4 people and spend less than 10 dollars. About a year ago they closed down…

Everything you love about iPod just got tinier. iPod mini lets you bring along enough music for a three-day weekend getaway in a package so small you’ll forget you’re carrying it. Until people ask you about it, that is. Available on Mac and Windows for just $249.

It started with me waiting for 3 trains… The first 2 were express due to some problem…then mine sits underground for a good 10 minutes: “this train is experiencing technical difficulties. The driver of this train has has gotten off of the cars in order to fix the problem.”

Not long ago and far away, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip…but there were problems everywhere.
Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves didn’t produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.
Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her Mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out…heaven knows where to. More Stress!
Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.
Totally frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. When he went to the cupboard, he found the elves had hid the liquor and there was nothing to drink.
In his frustration, he dropped the coffee pot and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw it was made from. Just then the doorbell rang and Santa cussed on his way to the door. He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.The angel said: “Where would you like me to put this tree fat man?”

So this weekend was thanksgiving. That went really well. Spent the whole day at the grandparents house. I even helped cook and clean, such a great grandson…

My first week at work was completed. It went well. We launced the first site I will be working on and it has already been crawled, which is good news…we will see how everything else goes with this site.